The *new* origin story of Habitgrams

Sep 23, 2018
• Phillip Gentry

In 2015 I started working on the original Habitgrams.com site…

I had this idea that I could create a service that could help people create new behaviors in life. I had quit smoking some time before that and used regular reminders to keep myself on track. I felt that this had been really key in making that a success and I wanted to empower others to do the same.

I hired a contractor and the site began. We had a working prototype and even had a few hundred live people in the system. Things were going great, but then in 2016 my world fell apart.

My day job went bankrupt. My step dad died in a car accident, then my mom followed him as her lung cancer returned a few short months later. I started a new job and it felt like everything hinged on the success of that, but it meant I had to move to San Francisco for six months of that year.

All that added up to completely putting Habitgrams.com onto the backburner. In retrospect, I think I was more depressed than I realized and was doing everything I could to just hold things together. But that is another story. The bottom line is that I let Habitgrams go away. I realized at some point that I wasn’t taking care of it, and so it was shut down and I jut focused on keeping the rest of my life together.

Fast-forward to 2018. After some time to move forward, I settled into the new job. I started to see hope and wonder what I could bring to the future again.

Then, not too long before writing this, I started thinking about the Habitgrams project again.

I decided to talk it out with my good friend Jonathan. At that time, I was considering the idea but hadn’t really decided to bring it back to life.

His enthusiasm for the project kinda took me by surprise. I think mostly his fresh perspective made me realize that it is still something worth building and reminded me of the spirit the project was originally launched with.

Jonathan has a degree in Computer Science and for the last few years has been wanting to get back to his coding roots. This also seemed like a perfect project for him to do just that, so within a few minutes everything just came together and we were on our way.

In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot about startups (and life) since the first attempt. I have a lot more to bring to the table now and founding Habitgrams is a way for me to bring change and contribute back to the world.

So now we’re moving fast.

Everything is getting rebuilt from the ground up. We’re defining strong goals and values. No contractors this time, just people who really want to help and care about the project.